User reviews

Even at under an hour, this film drags a bit in the middle but has so much going for it that it has to be called a "must-see." Definitely see the dialog-free version (DEMENTIA) before you see the narrated version (DAUGHTER OF HORROR) but do see both of them because the narration by future Tonight Show co-host Ed McMahon is priceless! The jazzy score and accompanying vocal renderings accent the weird mood perfectly. The last 15 minutes in the jazz club are especially striking as music, image and pace increase to a fever pitch until the movie starts as it began. It's amazing that a film as avant garde as this actually played mainstream theaters in the 50s.

I watched Daughter of Horror, not the original version called Dementia. Of course the newer version has a voice over by Ed McMahon of Star search/Johnny Carson fame. Dementia had no voice over.

Neither film had dialog. The only thing you heard was the music of George Antheil. You watched as the faces of the actors gave the story. A woman (Adrienne Barrett) possessed by madness; the daughter of a philandering mother and a drunken father who murdered her, even as she murdered her father.

It was Luis Buñuel and Orson Welles throughout. Even the character of the rich man (Bruno VeSota) was channeling Orson Welles.

It is a bohemian rhapsody wrapped in madness. A strange but compelling film.

Never heard of it, knew nothing about, watched it on a friend's recommendation and was struck by how daring and experimental it was for the time it was made. I was expecting a real piece of 50's cheese, but the further I got into it the more I realized it could not be so easily dismissed. Some of the nighttime black and white photography of the Gamine being pursued through city streets is right up there with THE THIRD MAN, and many of the images (especially the hacking off of a dead man's hand) are shockingly indelible. I'd place it many rungs above Ed Wood and perhaps only a rung or two below Herk Harvey (director/co-star and primary creative force behind the great ultra low budget masterpiece CARNIVAL OF SOULS, recently reissued on a gorgeous Criterion Collection DVD). Included on the DVD presentation is the re-cut version DAUGHTER OF HORROR, with Ed McMahon (!) providing a hilariously pretentious voice-over that was meant to make the film more accessible to a mainstream audience. It's a real hoot, one to play at parties to give your cinephile guests a laugh.

Finally after a long wait we can see the original version of "Dementia" which was re released two years later as "Daughter of Horror" , cut by two minutes and featured the notoriously bad voice over by the unknown (outside america) Ed McMahon , which was added as the re releasers thought that the public would not understand what was going on , it did the opposite and has unfairly given the film a bad reputation. Since the re release was shown , the film itself has pretty much disappeared and only terrible prints on the 1957 version have been available , giving a brief glimpse of what this film could have been. But now the full version has been released by Kino Films on DVD. The print is stunning (compared to the previously available anything would be preferable), and the restoration of the nightmarish "jazzey" score is fault less. "Dementia" and "Daughter of Horror" (it was given a more salatious title to get audiences in) are both on the disc...with some great extras its worth a look. The story itself is a living/dreaming nightmare , the boundaries are jarred from the first scene as we pan in from the empty street into the apartment window and track up to the bed. The Gammin wakes and looks as if she has just had a bad nightmare , she gets up and walks over to a drawer , opens it and pulls out a switchblade , she looks down and sneers , pockets the knife and goes out into the night. From here on we either know that she it totally insane or that she is out to protect herself or both. We follow her journey into bars and meetings with pimps and flower sellers. I wont tell you anymore about it , otherwise it will spoil the fun of finding out for yourself but this film is a must and belongs on any serious collectors shelf.

I first heard of this when I stumbled upon reviews of the Kino double-feature DVD (more on this later) and was especially intrigued by the fact that legendary writer-director Preston Sturges was among its admirers. Then I caught the film itself via the Internet and liked it – albeit watched on a very tiny screen; however, it took me a number of years to purchase the "Special Edition" disc and only managed to re-acquaint myself with the movie in time for this Halloween marathon. DEMENTIA is not your typical horror film – a succession of nightmarish visuals blending noir, psychology, exploitation and outright surrealism (in fact, some of the images here admirably evoked that notorious Luis Bunuel/Salvador Dali collaboration UN CHIEN ANDALOU [1929]!); equally notable, though, is its depiction of the current jazz/beatnik scene highlighted by George Antheil's nerve-jangling score. The ultra low-budget involved (being an independent production photographed by William C. Thompson, later responsible for Edward D. Wood Jr.'s infamous PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE [1959]!) and the inexperience of writer-director John J. Parker (this proved to be his only completed film) gave the whole affair a unique combination of raw emotions and oneiric visuals that were augmented by the complete lack of dialogue (at least in its original intended form). Perhaps unsurprisingly, DEMENTIA encountered several censorship problems (delineated in the accompanying essay – the objections raised by the various boards are quite hilarious, none more so than when dubbing the film "grist for the Communist mill"! – which is the centerpiece of the DVD supplements) and would only find sizable distribution through Jack H. Harris in 1957…after the picture was slightly trimmed (eliminating its more gruesome passages), an over-the-top commentary (ghoulishly-voiced by Ed McMahon) added and retitled DAUGHTER OF HORROR! Trivia: this less satisfactory bastardized version was actually the Midnight 'Spook Show' being screened during the memorable climax of Harris' own best-known production, THE BLOB (1958; which I opted to revisit the very next day on its account), while some of the locations would recognizably serve as backdrop for Orson Welles' no less sleazy and expressionistic masterwork TOUCH OF EVIL (1958)!

This is one of those (exceptionally) rare very low budget films where you can see clearly that, if the director had had more time and more money, we would be discussing a classic "film".

Better known to buffs of the odd, the obscure, and the strange as "Daughter of Horror", in the tale as told we are witness to the unraveling of a mind. Like "Eraserhead", the best of this sub-genre, it is difficult to tell where the madness starts and where reality ends- or, indeed, if any of what we see on screen is real at all. It is hard to get any sense of what is occurring from the Gamine's point of view. Are the events happening to her? Is she dreaming? Hallucinating? The viewer (or, at least this viewer) is always a little off balance while watching this movie, and I think that that is what the director was aiming at.

I would go so far as to say that, within the budgetary constraints imposed, this movie is a masterpiece. As stated in the synopsis, this is a dark movie with no sympathetic characters, no attractive locales, no hope. Were it just a Film Noire murder story, it would still be a very good movie. As a descent into madness, it excels.

Things to love about it:

It's black and white, and creepy. It's mostly about sex. It takes place ENTIRELY in the mind of the main character. No dialog. It features a great chicken-eating scene - perhaps it influenced Tom Jones some eight years later. It's short. Nice atmospheric score. It features sporadic narration by Ed McMahon.

Things to dislike: Unattractive actors pretty much across the board. Seems like three hours due to poor pacing. Largely incomprehensible, because it takes place in the lead character's mind. It features sporadic narration by Ed McMahon.

And this is not the jocular Ed you know from the Tonight Show and Star Search. This is a crazily over the top, foaming-at-the-mouth out-of-control Ed. There are two versions of this movie (the other one is called Dementia) and this one was an attempt to salvage a bad investment by making it all easier to understand. Doesn't work. Or rather it works because it's easier to understand, but the narration is crap. It's kind of like having a skilled navigator on a lifeboat who insists on jumping up and down like a maniac - on one hand useful, on the other he's throwing the whole thing out of balance.

This movie (originally 1953, I believe) is approachable on so many levels, it is difficult to say where to begin. We could start with the acting - Adrienne Barrett (whoever she is) is perfectly cast as the troubled, sinister, smirking, sexy anti-heroine. We could then examine the style - the mix of surrealism, expressionism, and film noir. We could then comment on the atmosphere - conjured through bleak-looking streets and unnerving music. Then there are the simple images - shadows growing and shrinking, gaunt faces, sharp contrasts between lights and darks. We might take a Freudian approach - the dysfunctional parents, the father imagery, the sexual symbols (cigars, no less!). There is also the Beat culture interest in the excellent jazz-band scene. There are also the intriguing comparisons one could make between the "silent" version and the narrated one.

As a horror movie in-itself, it may appear somewhat cheesy and overstated, but it clearly does not take itself too seriously, and you shouldn't either. Compared to other horror films I give it an 8, but due to its uncommon critical and historical appeal, I rate it overall a 9. Truly a unique achievement.

This review is for the "Daughter of Horror" version.

The bulk of this odd little gem consists of close-ups of people making goofy faces at the camera (and moving cigars in and out of their mouths), an unseen woman who seems to be working on trying to sing the classic "Star Trek" theme song (but never quite hits the last couple of notes), and a piano player playing bits of the opera "Carmen" (most noticeably, the Toreador Song).

The plot mostly follows the experiences of a (crazy?) woman who may or may not have committed a certain recent crime, but did kill when younger.

Oh, and there's a very long scene of a chubby gentleman eating chicken for what seems like several minutes and making his face all nice and shiny with grease.

It is advisable that, unless you want to break into giggling fits, that you watch this the FIRST time with all the sound OFF. The only part with the sound that actually works for this gem is the dancing scene about 15 minutes in.

It isn't really that spooky. It doesn't really offend or even challenge the senses much in my opinion, as some have said. There are a few parts that remind me slightly of "Eraserhead".

In the end, I'm not even sure what has happened, whether it was ALL a dream, SOME of it was a dream, or only certain parts were a dream. (I ask that because hands don't really move hours after they've been removed, DO they?) The most interesting scene is where a wave comes over her and the bits of water look like human fingers going over her (which is shown a few times at the beginning, and a couple of times near the end) which seems to relate to the hand that was removed during the crime.

It also seems that the director has a hatred for people who like jazz by making them all look like confused and unstable buffoons. This part actually reminds me a lot of "Reefer Madness".

7/10 for weirdness. Nothing at all for the ridiculous, amateurish narration which basically ruins it and keeps it from having a more spooky flow from start to finish. Again, turn the volume completely down the first time you watch it. Trust me on that.

Where to begin with this occult little gem? To be very honest, I haven't quite figured out what it is yet. Dementia stands as a strange experiment and worth analyzing, that's for sure. I'm probably giving it too much honor now, but I risk to say it's a dared and surrealist highlight of expressionism and no-budget cinema-making…. BUT, in constant combination with amateurism and wannabe-psychology. You might even say it looks like and Ed Wood film while he had a moment of clarity and ingenious brilliancy.

For not more than an hour, we follow around a lonely and seemly anti-social woman in a cruel neighborhood of prostitution, orgies and murder. She suffers from visions of childhood trauma's while she's filling up with fury and hatred towards a rich, ignorant man. She kills him and flees…chased by the police and haunted by her own morbid imagination. Keeping in mind this film was made in 1953, it becomes even more interesting! The US censorship didn't like it at all and the film barely received showings…No surprises there because, even though the film doesn't contain explicit violence, it's very unpleasant and disturbing to look at. Every character that walks through the screen is unsympathetic and someone you don't want to run into in a dark alley. The atmosphere this film breathes feels like David Lynch's Eraserhead avant-la-lettre, and I wouldn't be surprised if he found some of his inspiration and enthusiasm in Dementia. This film is perhaps a little too weak and messy to refer to as avant-garde, but it does float somewhere between that and cheap B-cinema. Up to you to decide where it's categorized best! One thing is sure, though…Dementia is food for thought at film-Academies. I saw the original version of this lost film at a festival, on the big screen and guided by a life-orchestra of cello's and a piano. The film itself doesn't contain any dialogues and therefore this chilling music brought it up to an almost unbearable cult-experience.

Powerful visual style highlights this noir nightmare film, originally made in 1951. Is it Freudian, Surreal, or just plain fugged up? This is outsider film making, a one of kind rarity(the director's only film)that either discards standard film technique, or is totally ignorant of it. But the photography and music are both weird, wild, and quite well done. No dialog!!

The original director's version (Dementia)is much better than the one with some of the gore cut out, and an intrusive, idiotic Ed McMahon voiceover(Daughter of Darkness).They are both on the DVD, so don't make the mistake of watching the censored "Daughter" version first.

Don't miss the highly suggestive "chicken eating" scene. It's hilarious!!

What an odd little film. At just under an hour runtime- and with practically no dialogue- this mostly silent, noirish, horror-thriller is beautifully shot- and has more "gore" (a term used lightly here) than you'd expect to see in a film made in the 50's.

In it, we follow a young woman out on the prowl for vengeance. A woman who was "born into horror"- for she was raised amidst a domestic abuse situation, during which she witnessed her alcoholic father murder her adulterous mother (hence the alternative title: Daughter Of Horror).

She manages to enact revenge upon her father...and get away with it. And, thus, fancies herself a bit of a sociopath. But she also retains her extreme intolerance for misogyny.

She sees the misogyny of her father reflected everywhere she goes...and it's pushing her toward the brink of insanity. She still fantasizes about murdering him. And she can't even leave the house at night without being accosted by every other guy on the street; acting like they own her.

But this only pushes her toward her next act of vengeance. And this time she has a plan.

She pretends to be a prostitute; and makes a deal with the local pimp (The Devil). He sets her up with one of his wealthy clients: her target; and he gets to keep the money.

The man is a wealthy, glutton, and socialite, with a penchant for beautiful young women. And he just so happens to be the same john that his mother was seeing, when her father was driven to bitter, alcohol-induced insanity, and murder...

She has chosen to hang with the devils and walk with the ghouls, but is she really cut out for this path to Hell? Or is this Hell but a construct of her imagination, stemming from her guilt? The double twist at the end, reveals why everything turns so bizarre in the latter portion of the film, at least.

What makes this film so odd, is that it first comes off as if it is feminist, in nature. Like she's a superhero, of sorts: wandering the streets; luring in unsuspecting misogynists to their deaths. I mean, her actions are at least somewhat justified- in a Dexter sort of sense- you'd think. But the narration, and guilt trip she is sent on, kind of throw this into question- making the whole thing seem more like it was meant to be a propaganda piece, teaching the misogynistic patriarchy about the dangers of raising a young feminist-minded daughter. It's really hard to read what the "motive" of this film was for contemporary viewers, from a modern context. However, with that being said, it's certainly worth a watch for it's attractive mise-en-scene; bloodless gore; and that epic jazz sequence at the end.

6 out of 10.

I saw this great movie in error in 1972. Dementia 13 by Coppola was ordered and Dementia (Daughter of Horror) showed up. I was particularly impressed by the brilliant score by Antheil and sung by Marnie Nixon, later the voice of Maria in the movie West Side Story.

Interesting note - In the original movie, The Blob, it is the movie being shown in the movie theater when the kids run in to find their friends.

The style of Dementia was captivating and created a surreal mood. For those interested in obscure horror films, well worth seeing.

After originally seeing it it took almost 10 years to even find a reference to it (partially because of the two names). I finally got a copy of Dementia around 10 years ago and can now appreciate it whenever I choose.

If Ed Wood had gone to film school he might have made this quirky howler. The graveyard scenes & omniscient narrator are standard Wood tropes. This short film is a mash up of Freudian psycho babble w/classic noir cinematography, graphic violence, overwrought acting & some nifty camera angles. There's even a reverse tracking shot through a window that Hitchcock would use in Psycho 5 yrs later. I'm not saying he stole it from this movie, but.... Throw in a severed hand, a jazz combo, and Orson Welles' double. If it really is Ed McMahon narrating, it's a bonus. That's Marni Nixon doing a 'theremin' yodel on the soundtrack! (Was she cheaper than a real theremin?) The "actors" look like an Ed Wood casting call of 'street people'; everyone looks garish & homely. Granted, some of the on-location night scenes shot in seedy, downtown wherever are so dark you can't see the action, but kudos for the effort. Too bad the print is pretty worn; there was some real artistic intent behind this deadpan attempt at horror. Worth seeing at least once, it's unique, nutty & fun.

I orginally saw Dementia in 1972 at the Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge Mass. It was there in error since Coppola's Dementia 13 was on the bill. What a treat. I requested return engagements after that and could find no reference to Dementia for years. Finally, at the library of arts at Lincoln Center in New York I found the history including the alternate title Daughter of Horror. I finally got a copy of the film about 6 years ago. Still one of my favorites. Particularly because of the music and the fabulous singing of Marnie Nixon (voice of Maria in West Side Story and other films. A brilliant film by John Parker - who may actually be Bruno Vesota. Unknown piece of information. He of course is famous for such classics as The Brain Eaters and Attack of the Giant Leeches. Seriously, Dementia is a great movie and displays a sophistication of production that belies its obvious lack of a substantial budget.

A good friend recommended this short piece to me (running time only around 60 minutes). For sure this was for its time (1955) a very experimental and daring piece with a fine tone of Film Noir, no dialogue at all but some good jazz tunes and some ghostly music. For our modern "eye" nothing that happens is that surprising or ueber-creative but if we take into consideration the time this movie was made, it must have been an astonishing piece to the audience. Dementia I would recommended to that kind of audience that is interested in the art and history of movie-making. Interesting.

In case you ever wondered (and as a true film buff, of course you did) what that strange movie called DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS showing at the cinema being attacked by the blob in THE BLOB is – well, this is it! It used to be called DEMENTIA and was made by a guy named John Parker at approximately the same time as Ed Wood made GLEN OR GLENDA – they even employed the same cinematographer.

In fact the two films have a lot in common, being both very personal cinematic statements, and also sharing the kind of ineptitude that some critics favor. Of course, Ed Wood is basically just a sweet transvestite from Transylvania.

The idea of casting Lugosi as the genetic puppet-master is really a stroke of genius. It is also absolutely hilarious.

The sight of this once great (or at least adequate) actor, having no idea what he's saying with his usual thick accent is nothing less than a revelation – what a wonderfully absurd way of expressing your doubts and fears, and what a catharsis it must have been for the director, leading up to the supreme moment, when, as a token of love and understanding, his partner hands him the comparatively innocent article of clothing symbolizing the more discreet pleasures of the Lumberjack Song! So what if the audience has no idea what's going on? DEMENTIA is altogether less endearing. The director's heart may or may not bleed for his psychopathic lesbian ("gamine" – another euphemism) but the film basically comes across as a homophobic treatise.

Or is the director a homosexual himself, torn between his sympathy for the plight of the protagonist and his disgust with her whole sex? We shall never know, but it's fun to guess.

Which I might add does not mean condemnation, since any sexual deviation is a testimony to the wonderful diversity of human nature – unless you're a Fascist. In fact, condemnation seems to be what's wrong with this young woman rather than her occupation (she's a prostitute) or sexual orientation, as we are invited to share her disgust, in a series of cuts between "the rich man", who – although inexcusably fat and perspiring – looks as if he's enjoying his dinner, and the face of our heroine, which is a mask of hate.

Also, the fact that her pimp is being characterized in the credits as "the evil one" may lead you to suspect that the filmmaker is not a complete stranger to the idea that the problems of modern society is best solved by Charles Bronson. Many critics will undoubtedly prefer Parker to Wood, the former exhibiting a style as familiar as it is primitive.

Criminals being followed by floodlights (instead of being arrested) or surrounded by maniacally laughing crowds (instead of being lynched) may not make a lot of sense, but I'm sure you'll find it in the curriculum of every motion picture academy in the world, and of course the inclusion of a jam session does not in any way justify a comparison to a beach monster movie. The young woman isn't pretty, nor is she very happy about herself (or anybody else for that matter) so I suppose it has to be a serious work of art in spite of the crawling severed hands – personally, I much prefer to enjoy it on the level of hilariously bad film-making.

This is one of the best and most intelligent films ever--although I don't think I'll be seeing it again anytime soon. I have never been so assaulted emotionally, psychologically, and intellectually by a movie. If you are looking for a fun and scary horror movie--this is NOT what you are looking for. This film is very disturbing. It is not gory, or overly graphic, just disturbing. The aesthetics of the film stretch back to early German Expressionism to 70s psychedelia. It is a bizarre mix of many things, most of which work perfectly. As you watch it, it's very easy to start judging the movie and go "Oh God, it's doing this or that". There are definately times when the movie borders on badness. But it is always one step ahead of itself, and one step ahead of you, and one step ahead of any other movie I have ever seen. The things the director does are amazing--he does things that were so ahead of his time.

The portrait of the main character is amazing. I've never felt so close to a character who completely freaked me out, as I did to her. She is SCARY--and so human in a wierd way. And that's why this movie was so good. It is not a black and white horror movie. It's not a slasher flick. It is definately trying to tell you something. Whether the final message is feminist or sexist is up for debate. This film is so well done that it's hard to tell whether it's being purposeful or exploitative. It's pointless to write more. You just have to see it.

This is something of a weird horror/film-noir experimental piece which met with censorship issues back in the 50's, meaning that it went mostly unseen for many years. It's avant-garde nature is most probably by necessity as opposed to design, as it has no dialogue and barely any synchronised sound and instead has a soundtrack compromising of jazz and wailing that wouldn't be out of place in a sci-fi movie. The cinematography is pretty inventive though and there are a bunch of individually memorable sequences in here. The story focuses on a psychotic woman and her night-time odyssey through a city - it plays like a living nightmare of sorts. Without sync-sound it can be somewhat unengaging at times but kudos to it for being so thoroughly strange and transgressive for its time.

John Parker wrote, produced and directed this ambitious but relatively amateurish paean (one presumes) to silent German Expressionism. Equating madness with evil, Parker follows a disturbed young woman (armed with a switchblade) around Los Angeles at night, where beatniks and goons paw at her while a detective--who looks like the woman's dead father--beats a wino to death right in front of her. Parker has one interesting shot early on, a double image of a girl running while a wave crashes behind her, which is then repeated at least twice. The filmmaker knows a great deal about visual composition and technique, but he doesn't do anything exciting with the wordless format--and he's useless with his actors. In the lead, Adrienne Barrett is frequently exposed to ridicule; looking like one of the Bowery Boys in a skirt, Barrett alternately scowls and smirks in close-up, and is incapable of pulling off such dramatic scenes as crawling across the ground to retrieve her bulky necklace or getting all hot and bothered in an underground jazz club. Reissue version "Daughter of Horror" comes with a narration by Ed McMahon as Madness Incarnate, though the theme of insanity is not treated as a mental illness; instead, it's something a person stumbles into, and then frantically attempts to escape from. Parker even tries for a twist ending, but it's all for naught. "Dementia" is demented in all the wrong ways. *1/2 from ****